Spring

This is what spring looks like.  Truly.  So why not make a dish that takes the best of those green, grassy, sweet flavors, adds garlic, great olive oil and a hit of salt and serve it up in one dish? The subtle beauty of all these colors of green tangled together help us understand the idea of renewal inherent in the spring holiday celebrations of Easter or Passover.

In Italy it’s called cianfotta, the all purpose dish that changes with the seasons as new vegetables appear and leave the markets.  This saute is one of my master recipes. Serve it as a side dish.  Or to make it a bit more substantial for vegetarians add a handful of toasted pine nuts or almonds.  For a one course dinner add nuts and a bit of soft or aged goat cheese.  

This recipe is a template.  You can add sliced and trimmed baby artichokes or fava beans.  You may omit the mint or use onions instead of leeks.  Some folks leave out the lettuce.  It’s up to you.

At the Wednesday Santa Monica Farmers’ Market — two blocks from the Pacific Ocean — we’re finding one of the treasures of spring: green garlic, thick as a leek and two feet long.

With fresh green garlic, everything is edible except for the outermost skin. The farmer I buy them from swears that even the roots are edible. With some trepidation I nibble on a root strand and am pleasantly surprised that it has heat and an intense garlic flavor.

Next to the stand with the green garlic is Carlsbad Aqua Farm where we buy our fresh mussels, oysters, clams, and scallops. The idea was obvious to me: green garlic and clams.

Sometimes it’s all about the cut. Take asparagus. Everyone loves the long, lanky, sexy look of a whole asparagus spear. (Sorry—sounds like I’m describing a brand of Gap jeans). Why would you want to wreck that by cutting it up?

Oh, yeah, there’s that awkward moment when you’re trying to cut those long spears with a fork on your dinner plate.

And the even more awkward moment when you push the woody bottom half of the spears over to the side of your plate because they’re undercooked.

Now consider this—with a few extra seconds of work upfront, you can have a beautiful, evenly cooked, easy-to-eat asparagus side dish that can take on a variety of flavors, too.

So I’m going to ignore my mother (who claims I tend to get a bit fussy about my vegetable cuts), and suggest that you try slicing your asparagus on the diagonal (sharply…at a sharp angle…on the bias…however you want to say it) for a change.

For me nothing says "spring" more so than asparagus. As soon as the warm weather of early spring approaches, I start scouring the farmers' market for the first signs of asparagus. I'm always looking for the most slender green spears, ivory white ones, and even the dark purple-almost-black ones. I appreciate all types of asparagus.

I love asparagus cooked any which way except boiled—that's the reason I hated them so much as a kid because they I only ever had them boiled and overcooked. Even though they're not yet available at my most markets just yet, I've already begun cooking with asparagus. I'm just too eager to wait, so until they're available I won't mind the supermarket ones.

For this recipe I roast the asparagus to bring out their sweet taste. Alongside I also roast cherry tomatoes, which will become one of the many toppings for the dish. The dressing is a vinaigrette made from olives and lots of Dijon mustard. And finally the dish gets flourished with salty, tangy feta. This recipe is great as either an appetizer or a side dish.